bemoreeco

This remarkable story is reported by EarthFirst about Edith Macefield. Edith rued her house being engulfed by local industry and refused to leave. In desperation local developers offered increasingly large sums of money for Edith to move out. The Seattle Times article states Edith was offered nearly $1m to move, she turned it down.

Edith, 86, passed away a fortnight ago, in the same house and on the same couch where her mother had died. As the Seattle Times reports:

The tiny house in the industrial flats once was part of a row of picket-fence-lined cottages along a working-class street. That was old Ballard. Today it sits walled in on three sides by what will be a five-story health club and a Trader Joe’s. New Ballard.

The only reason the new hasn’t completely obliterated the old — yet, anyway — is because of the principled lady who lived there. She stuck it out through years of garbage trucks rumbling by, a homeless car-camping colony out her front door, and now, for the past two years, the racket of construction mere feet from her windows.

“I don’t care about money,” Edith said. “What would I do with that kind of money anyway?

So what becomes of her house now? The article notes that joints and holes have been left in the construction around her assuming they will be added in once the house is demolished? Edith had no relatives, and in the last two years spent much of her time with the senior construction superintendent.